...-.... ........ ""'- - ,... ; 1 ",f ... _ :-:--, _- \ ,,'4 "!?I..:-----.,-_._,.-.,.- "'-'\.- \1-'. "" \ h.", v 'v- '\.4'l S h V\ vj "T ' J k " .Let s uO snac . . ing. His platoon had been travelling in front of the main attack force, as usual, and he was cheerfully watching the Iraqis retreat in an orderly fashion along the road leading to the Lake Hammar causewa He and his fellow-Scouts had been told "to make sure that these guys are retreating." He recalled, "I remember thinking, It's over, it's over. These guys are going home. It was just a line of ve- hicles on the road." John Brasfield also remembers that morning. He had been troubled by his own brigade's continuing movement to the east, toward Basra. "On the day of the ceasefire, we got an order to move out," Brasfield recalled. "I'm a 'Why?' guy, and I asked Allen wh I didn't want to die after the ceasefire. He said, 'This is what we're instructed to do.' " Early on the morning of March 2nd, Brasfield continued, his platoon had moved east, with no Iraqi opposition. Some soldiers who were farther east re- ported that an Iraqi tank "came up on them, but it never fired. We sat there all morning watching movement on the road about six kilometres awa)T." A steady stream of retreating tanks moved along the road. "There's no hostile action to- ward us, but they don't see us," Brasfield said. Edward Walker also recalled the tableau as non-threatening. "Many of the Iraqi tanks were on flatbed trucks 64 THE NEW YOR.KER., MAY 22, 2000 . and had their turrets tucked backward"- that is, their cannons were facing away from the American combat forces. When word of the Iraqi column first reached Le Moyne's 1st Brigade com- mand post, his intelligence officer, Cap- tain Linda Suttlehan, informed him that "the only unit" it cowd belong to was the Hammurabi Republican Guard tankdi- vision, one of the most battle-hardened units in the Iraqi Army, which was scrambling to get back, intact, to Bagh- dad. There was a growing sense of ex- citement both in the brigade and in the division headquarters, Suttlehan recalled. Some of the senior officers "wanted ac- tion," and said as much. A far less threatening observation was officially reported sometime around 6 or 7 A.M. by the 1st Brigade to the 24th Di- vision tactical-operations center. Item 47 in the division log for March 2nd noted, "Col Le Moyne is observing vehicles, which consist of 200 trucks (flatbeds with some mil[itary] vans)." A tank or any other vehicle riding on a flatbed posed no threat, as every armored officer knew. However, that reassuring report was contradicted by Le Moyne in the very next log item, which said that Le Moyne "reports that vehicles' report is 'erroneous and bullshit.'" Le Moyne then ordered an attack-helicopter reinforcement for his brigade-a major escalation. The radio suddenly came to life, James 1Ylanchester recalled. He listened as Cap- tain Richard B. Averna, the commander of Ware's Charlie Compan told Ware that the retreating Iraqis were prepar- ing to fire antitank missiles at the Amer- ican forces. Manchester said his platoon was astonished at the message. "We are sitting right on top of these people," he told me, referring to the Iraqis, "and there are no vehicles pulled off" Captain Averna, he said, was behind him and could not see the line of vehicles. Brasfield recalled a different but equally overwrought report. "One of the companies sees one or two dismounts"- Iraqj soldiers who have climbed off a tank or armored vehicle-"with an R. G. pointed in its direction. They ask permission to engage, and finally get it. There's some boom, boom, boom-a very short engagement. This was earl before the big battle." Brasfield said he was later told, "Somebody panicked and thought they saw something they didn't see." Another factor in the Scout pla- toon's skepticism over the report, Bras- field said, was a lack of confidence in Ware's leadership. Sergeant Stuart Hirstein, of the 124th Military Intelligence Battalion, was clear- ing an Iraqi bunker with a company in the 2-7 Battalion when his unit moni- tored the early reports about Iraqi fire. One of the combat companies in Ware's battalion had issued an urgent call for help, asking every available unit to come to its rescue: it was taking fire from on- coming Iraqi tanks. Hirstein and his team rushed to the site in their armored vehicles. When they arrived, he said, there was no attack and no imminent threat from the retreating Iraqi tanks. "Some of the tanks were in travel forma- tion, and their guns were not in any en- gaged position."The Iraqi crew members "were sitting on the outside of their vehi- cles, catching rays," he said. "N obodywas on the machine guns." And yet the Americans "wanted to fire them up." At that point, he added, their commanders said no. There was a barrage of messages. "The radio was blasting," Linda Suttle- han told me. One message stood out: a Scout claimed that an Iraqi R. G. had been fired at him. Other soldiers re- ported that an Iraqi tank had fired at their positions. "We plotted grids, but